Alien Plots: Female Subjectivity and the Divine in the Light of James Tiptree's 'a Momentary Taste of Being'

Inez ven der Spek

Abstract

At the heart of this study is a science fiction story by James Tiptree Jr (Alice Sheldon-Bradley, 1916–1987) about a brother and a sister (and fifty-eight other human beings) who encounter an alien while on a starship travelling to discover a habitable planet. The book includes an outline of Tiptree's work and of her remarkable life as the only child of jungle explorers, as a painter, an American agent during and after World War II, an experimental psychologist, and a female science fiction writer in male disguise.